W.H., Kremlin offer proposals on curbing nuclear tests, July 30, 1985

On this day in 1985, the White House and the Kremlin each offered fresh proposals on curbing nuclear tests.

President Ronald Reagan suggested that Moscow send observers to witness an underground nuclear test in Nevada. Hours later, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, said on national television that the Soviet Union would impose a unilateral five-month moratorium on its nuclear arms tests. It would start on Aug. 6, the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, which led to the Japanese surrender in World War II.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Gorbachev added that the moratorium could be extended if the United States also halted its own underground nuclear weapons tests, which it did not.

These developments came as George Shultz, Reagan’s secretary of state, and Eduard Shevardnadze, who had been named Soviet foreign minister 27 days earlier, arrived in Helsinki, Finland, for a three-day meeting marking the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords on European security and cooperation.

Shultz told reporters that the United States did not believe “it is in our interest to stop our testing program under these circumstances.”

He also voiced doubts about the sincerity of Gorbachev’s initiative. “History has shown when they feel they need to test, they’ll break out of it with a bang,” Shultz added. The United States, he noted, was more interested in working out reliable means of verifying existing arms accords.

In the meantime, Larry Speakes, Reagan’s press secretary, said: “We regret that the Soviet Union to date has been unwilling to negotiate in concrete and detailed terms to achieve [nuclear weapons] reductions in [talks between the two superpowers in] Geneva. In this respect, not only have they failed to address our desire for deep reductions and enhanced stability, but they have not been willing to present specific, numerical levels supporting their own approach.”